I've now come across a notorious bug: I cannot save any progress beyong the beginning of the last arc (quest 27) of the Blood Knight. Everytime I restart the game, progress from before is lost. Has anyone on iPad/iPhone faced this issue? I am on Android.

I highly doubt this. For this I had way too many repeating dungeons while completing the game two times. Perhaps "dungeons" and "quests" are sometimes used synonymous, although being two different things. 30+ quests yes, 30+ dungeons no.

I'm on Android, so we haven't got Orc here, but I'm eagerly waiting for it. Can you vouch that Orc is better...and in every way or only some?

I guess that's a matter of personal preference. The pros are that Orc has to offer nicer graphics/backgrounds/animations with a greater variance between different chapters than Heroes Call (where the colors brown and grey are all too dominating throughout the game's artwork) and that looting is simply much more fun than in Heroes Call (although not perfect too). It also offers Game Center achievements, which Heroes Call is completely lacking. The cons are that Orc costs $2.99 and is quite short, with no additional character classes available. There are also some other, minor points, where Orc still has room for improvements: more than two equipment slots (weapon and shield), a hero that is running by default (instead of walking), and skippable cut-scenes should definitely be addressed in a future update.

In the end, Orc offered a more polished and a more atmospheric experience to me, with an overall greater quality of content. When it comes to quantity, with only 17 quests in Orc, at first sight it may seem that Heroes Call has to offer way more content (40 quests and 3 character classes), but this is fool's gold: During different quest you are often encountering completely identical dungeons and all character classes are sent through (basically) the same quests, just in a different order. I have to admit that particularly this (either deceitful or unoriginal) kind of content recycling is something I don't like about Heroes Call.

Hey, I finally answered the call for the Shadow Assassin, and while I don't want to give anything away, her call is not a happy one. Oh, the sad fate we have when we value money over integrity, you saucy sellsword, you.

Now, on to some additional tips:

1. Use the Bank. What I love about the Bank is that you can place an item for a character that you are not currently playing. So, let's say you are a warrior and obtain wizard items. Place the items in the Bank. Then, you can open the wizard character and retrieve the items from the Bank.

2. Make the appraiser work! Did you know that you have multiple appraisers who can work for you? You get two open slots PER character. So, lets say you have five unidentified items. Place two with the appraiser, and the other three in the bank. Open another character and retrieve the items from the bank. Go to the appraiser, and the slots are empty. Place two more items in the slots. Rinse and repeat for all characters. As I currently have six characters (three for the wizard, warrior, and shadow assassin in Normal mode and three in Hard mode), I have up to 12 open slots for items to be appraised at any time.

3. Make the Hard mode a bit easier. Using the Bank tip above, let's say you are playing the Warrior character in Normal mode and answer the call (complete all 30 quests). If you play the Warrior character in Hard mode, transfer your successful equipment to this character. This way, you do not have to buy equipment for a character type twice.

3. Make the Hard mode a bit easier. Using the Bank tip above, let's say you are playing the Warrior character in Normal mode and answer the call (complete all 30 quests). If you play the Warrior character in Hard mode, transfer your successful equipment to this character. This way, you do not have to buy equipment for a character type twice.

To be clear on this: Remember that your hero can only use gear with level equal to or lower than his own level, so your Level 1 Hard Warrior can't use your Level 15 Normal Warrior equipment. So in order to reuse your Warrior equipment from Normal mode in Hard mode you have to deposit gear of different levels in the bank while playing the game on Normal difficulty.

Update: Ok, nevermind. Finally did it. The trick is to get a sword or armour that reduces the speed of the attacker. In my case, I had a sword that reduced Jovan's speed by 60%. I still had to use 2 potions just to be safe. Wasn't so bad...so yea, that's the trick I guess.

I didn't even know that speed reducing items do exist! Never found one and never saw one at the Blacksmith. Very odd! How is this effect described in the description of a weapon?

1) Enemy spawning is not consistent at all. I could have a very hard level with lots of lich kings (these are by far the hardest enemies), and die and quit. When I replay, the level is devoid of any lick king. The final (second final infacr) quest to kill the high priestess was a walk in the park as on my second try, not a single lich king (first try had about 10 of em).

2) The gold in-game collected doesn't increase proportionally (not at all infact) with the increase in price of weapons, potions and what not. Weapons have an extremely low resale value.

3) Syncing via Facebook is not really working well. I'm on Level 15, but my FB sync will be a few quests back for example. Also, cross platform sync (ANdroid to iOS) is not working well. As I mentioned before, gamesave is broken on both platforms for some people as well.

I hope the devs can address to the above anomalies that can be easily rectified via code changes. If others have more, please add on.

I guess that's a matter of personal preference. The pros are that Orc has to offer nicer graphics/backgrounds/animations with a greater variance between different chapters than Heroes Call (where the colors brown and grey are all too dominating throughout the game's artwork) and that looting is simply much more fun than in Heroes Call (although not perfect too). It also offers Game Center achievements, which Heroes Call is completely lacking. The cons are that Orc costs $2.99 and is quite short, with no additional character classes available. There are also some other, minor points, where Orc still has room for improvements: more than two equipment slots (weapon and shield), a hero that is running by default (instead of walking), and skippable cut-scenes should definitely be addressed in a future update.

In the end, Orc offered a more polished and a more atmospheric experience to me, with an overall greater quality of content. When it comes to quantity, with only 17 quests in Orc, at first sight it may seem that Heroes Call has to offer way more content (40 quests and 3 character classes), but this is fool's gold: During different quest you are often encountering completely identical dungeons and all character classes are sent through (basically) the same quests, just in a different order. I have to admit that particularly this (either deceitful or unoriginal) kind of content recycling is something I don't like about Heroes Call.

Well, I actually rate Heroes Call to be amongst the best in terms of graphics for a mobile game. Then again, I primarily play on a Tegra 3 Android tablet, and comparing it with the iPad 2 lying at home, the Tegra version has better graphics (dynamic lighting, ragdoll physics among others). Yes, dungeons are basically the same: the have sewers, caves, hallways and giant libraries/church. That's about it.
Edit: Did you mention cutscenes in Orc? Wow, that would've been awesome in Heroes Call, though probably inflated the budget by a lot.

At least the characters behave differently though. I doubt the quest recycling is deceitful, the make it clear as much in the description that same quests played out in a different order. Based on what you've written, I look forward to Orc on Android.

Finally, how do you rate the the playability of HC in relation to Orc with respect to Gold coins/IAP? I know HC is not bad at all in this respect, just curious on Orc as it's a paid title.

PS - To the devs: You guys said there are new quests. I think to give the game some boost, limit the quests to only the combat assassin (and maybe shadow and plague wizard). This will make us look forward to playing the game again later and add some novelty to the certain character(s).

Well, I actually rate Heroes Call to be amongst the best in terms of graphics for a mobile game. Then again, I primarily play on a Tegra 3 Android tablet, and comparing it with the iPad 2 lying at home, the Tegra version has better graphics (dynamic lighting, ragdoll physics among others). Yes, dungeons are basically the same: the have sewers, caves, hallways and giant libraries/church. That's about it.

I'm playing both games on my iPhone 4. HC has good graphics, but unfortunately not too varied, especially regarding the use of colors.

Quote:

Originally Posted by defred34

Did you mention cutscenes in Orc? Wow, that would've been awesome in Heroes Call, though probably inflated the budget by a lot.

Cutscenes in Orc could've been nice, but as they 1) are using the in-game graphics, 2) are telling a clichee-ridden, unoriginal story, 3) cannot be skipped, I'd rather do without these.

Quote:

Originally Posted by defred34

I doubt the quest recycling is deceitful, the make it clear as much in the description that same quests played out in a different order.

Perhaps not really deceitful. It's just that when you're reading things like "over 40 quests" on iTunes you quite rightly expect all quests to play in different dungeons, which is not the case. They also say "more than 30 lush dungeons" on iTunes, which I still doubt, but after already having completed the game twice, I simply do not feel too motivated to verify this, so this is just my overall impression after two completed games.

Quote:

Originally Posted by defred34

Finally, how do you rate the the playability of HC in relation to Orc with respect to Gold coins/IAP? I know HC is not bad at all in this respect, just curious on Orc as it's a paid title.

In Orc you're showered with gold, so any IAPs are indeed completely unnecessary. Looking at how much gold you are usually gaining during a quest, how much gold you have to pay for a decent weapon or armor or for unlocking slots or for identifying gear, and how much gold you are getting when selling gear, HC simply feels a bit stingy.

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